Saturday, June 6, 2015

Text Formatting: Another Example of How Technology Can Support Student Literacy Learning...

Tech makes it easy to re-present content in a format that is more accessible for each individual...

"Researchers Testing the Impact of Text Formatting on Learning"

"...A four-year research effort at the University of California, Irvine will test out the impact of changing the formatting of text to help middle school students improve their reading and writing abilities.

VSTF, an approach developed by Walker Reading Technologies and licensed as "Live Ink," reformats text digitally with line breaks and indentations to assist visual and syntactic processing for students who are reading. Walker Reading was formed from a personal research project by Randall Walker, an assistant professor of medicine who teaches at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine.
Participating Garden Grove teachers will receive professional development on how best to teach close reading of texts to intermediate students. Then seventh and eighth grade students will read for 50 minutes each week in specially-selected texts that support the Common Core State Standards for English language arts. Classes will be randomly assigned to read the texts in regular block formatting or VSTF. Then the researchers will examine state and district test scores to evaluate the impact of the various approaches to reading on learning outcomes...."